In his recent exhibition “‘tic,’” Christian Freudenberger presented three paintings, all dated 2017 and Untitled, with differing parenthetical subtitles containing the French word that also named the show as a whole. Denoting, as in English, a nervous twitch or tremor caused by involuntary muscle contractions, the term may bring to mind a syndrome that disrupts everyday activities; the power of the unconscious, which eludes deliberate control; or any anomaly that calls normality into question. The titles are programmatic, because these three dimensionsthe disruption of ordinary perception, the role of the unconscious in such rupture, and the problem of what is thought of as normal and in which contextsare central preoccupations in Freudenberger’s art.

Freudenberger already probed these themes in an earlier series, “Alternative Objekte,” 2010–12pictures based on